Aug 17, 2007

Did you see the online California Catholic Daily article (click on this post's title) yesterday, Aug. 16, about all the vocations to the priesthood and the religious life among the alums of Thomas Aquinas College (shown above) in Santa Paula?

The article includes an interview with Fr. Sebastian Walshe, O. Praem., a Norbertine priest who is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College.

"TAC" is doing things right, and when will the vocations directors in Los Angeles and all over the USA start copying them?

Do you know any TAC grads who are in, or pursuing, vocations to the priesthood or religious life? If you can spare a moment, please tell us about them!

13 Comments:

I don't know any TAC students personally, Quinetro, but I'll tell you this: When we had the Walk for Life West Coast last January, about 250 TAC students stayed two nights in our gym at SS. Peter and Paul in San Francisco. I was a little worried about how 250 college students would behave. I needn't have. They left the gym in just as good shape as when they arrived, and lots of them attended all night Eucharistic Adoration in the church. Then, at 7AM, they started playing frisbee football in the park across the street before going to Mass at the Cathedral and the Walk for Life. They are superstars!

Thanks for answering! And thanks to your reply, some Net sleuthing shows that Maggie and Sister Marcella are one and the same.

This is from a 2003 TAC newsletter:

"It is a special joy for the Thomas Aquinas College community," Dr. Dillon continues, "that one of our graduates, Maggie Isaacson ('86) - now Sr. Marcella, M.C. - received the call to join Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity." (see photo)

Like all of Mother Teresa's sisters, Sr. Marcella has taken the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and an additional vow to serve "Christ in his distressing disguise," as Mother Teresa had explained in her Commencement Address at the College. "In our congregation we take a fourth vow of giving wholehearted, free service to the poorest of the poor. By this vow, we are specially bound to the people who have nothing and nobody, and [we], also, fully depend on Divine Providence."

Sr. Marcella was, for five years, the superior of a Missionaries of Charity convent in St. Louis, MO. She is now at their convent in Detroit, MI, where the sisters' mission is to evangelize the Spanish-speaking people of that city. "Mother will always have a 'mother's place' in the heart of every Missionary of Charity," Sr. Marcella says, "as well as a central place in our religious congregation. The M.C. vocation is to satiate the thirst of our Crucified Spouse for love and for souls as He disguises Himself in the poorest of the poor. Mother always wanted her Missionaries of Charity to be true to their name, and she never ceased to set before her spiritual children the means to become true Missionaries of Charity through intimacy with Jesus in the Eucharist and through tender and childlike devotion to Our Lady."

The beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a joyous occasion for her Missionaries of Charity, for Thomas Aquinas College, and for Catholics worldwide. In her total embrace of Christ in the poorest of the poor, she enriched all our lives.

And here, from a 2004 TAC bulletin, is proof that Fr. Jim and Sr. Marcella are indeed brother and sister:

0n May 18, 2004, Fr. Jim Isaacson, SSJC, was ordained by Cardinal George in Chicago as a member of the Society of St. John Cantius, a new Roman Catholic religious community dedicated to a restoration of the sacred in ministry and liturgy. Instaurare Sacrum (to restore the sacred) is their motto. He has found in the Society that sense of the sacred that he first encountered-as a somewhat reluctant freshman-at Thomas Aquinas College.

"Our family is so truly blessed. We are deeply grateful for everything we have received from Thomas Aquinas College," says Fr. Isaacson's mother, Mrs. William Isaacson. She is shown here with her newly ordained son Fr. Jim Isaacson, daughter, Sr. Marcella ('86), Regional Superior of the Missionaries of Charity, and son Bill, Jr. and his wife.

Excelling in mathematics in high school, and with little inclination to philosophy, Fr. Isaacson was not excited about the prospect of attending the College-but neither did he have a clear sense of direction elsewhere. His father was then a member of the College's Board of Governors, and both his parents were convinced that the classical liberal education offered at the College was invaluable. So, on the strength of their recommendation, Fr. Isaacson arrived at the College in 1981.

It was then that he first experienced the reverence, beauty and sacredness with which the Novus Ordo Mass is celebrated in Latin in the College's small chapel. And it was here that he first heard the whisper of the vocation that years later would lead him to join an order dedicated to restoring this very sense of the sacred.

Greetings! I myself am a TAC graduate from 2001, and if memory serves I think we have three or four in the cloth from my class alone. I know of one of my classmates is a monk, one in the Norbertines, (studying in Rome) and at least two nuns. But I can think of at least one or two dozen fellow alums from the time I was in school who are now priests, nuns or monks. And many of them are doing well, as a couple of years ago a TAC graduate was named the worldwide superior of the FSSP. Only a matter of time before one of our grads becomes a Bishop and Cardinal, maybe someday Pope?To think of all the great Cardinals to have visited the School, Arinze, Schönborn, Dulles, and Mother Theresa, i have to think TAC is truly a blessed place.

I was so happy to have gone to TAC as it was there I was accepted into the Church, being a former protestant and atheist before that.

Its such a great school and I am always proud to see others appreciate it. We do well despite Mahoney, I think he leaves TAC well enough alone, too much intellectual firepower to deal with. BTW our chapel should be finished soon and it will be one of the finest in the country.

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